#bookmarking
https://www.ejiltalk.org/is-israels-use-of-force-against-iran-justified-by-self-defence/
https://lieber.westpoint.edu/select-ihl--arising-israel-iran-conflict/
https://www.justsecurity.org/114641/israel-iran-un-charter-jus-ad-bellum/
https://lieber.westpoint.edu/israels-operation-rising-lion-right-of-self-defense/
https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2/english/rep_supp10_vol1_art2_4.pdf
https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2/english/rep_supp9_vol1_art2_4.pdf
Kefir ($1.85) and a biography of Christian Wolff on the rooftop cafe of the grocery, before buying the week's potatoes, rice, etc. Having a notion of what Kant had to work with at the beginning is proving very useful in understanding the directions things took. Not annotating -- the annotation pace has slowed so much that I'm going to just read a few to get back up to speed.
The thing that I shall miss the most about being circumstanced out of the theatre festival in Transylvania this year is the Noh troupe. Extraordinarily worthwhile.
The attraction to Japanese ritual and contemplative forms might be historically and culturally inflected. In the late 19th c. many Slavic immigrants had just come over to the Midwest, and Japan had prevailed in a stunning triumph over Russe. So there was a fascination among the eastern elites (e.g., Teddy Roosevelt) with Japanese culture, and this perhaps became a cultural force, perhaps displacing or preempting the Eastern forms that had reached the US by going west, instead of east. Just a notion, but the outlines of the facts seem to correspond. Far and few are the ikonostases and Holy Doors in the Midwest. In fairness, even the Roman church was explicitly equated with the Hindu pantheon in the correspondence of the Framers. A protestant nation at founding, but a permissive one (hence Baltimore).
But for whatever reason, the eastern forms do stand in my mind for the necessary focus and mediation that keeps a traveller on his path in summer heat and winter cold.
I'm beginning to realize that the most dangerous misreading of the present American politics might be that the obvious difficulties are somehow an exception existing only at the top. The nature of the shining city on the hill is that its characteristic nature is evident to every passerby. And whether from admiration or from scapegoating, the present difficulties in leadership seem to point to some characteristic sins.
Minor Verdi (Attila) at the city's national theatre. ($5, deep balcony) Excellent programming choice, apparently the full symphony orchestra in the pit, capable soli, large chorus. The sort of country-house stand-and-deliver Verdi that you might have heard at the beginning of the last century in a regional Italian house in a city of decent size, which is to say, a far more worthwhile evening than you'd probably have at one of the international houses with everything over-designed and planned. The essence of Verdi. Much like Shakespeare, it is the psycho-physical condition of the singers, demonstrating the revolutionary practice of freedom. Some clear local meanings in the staging, to be developed at too much length in a proper reflection TK.
Modalisms and modernity. Perhaps not unconnected, the point of the latter being that there are deeper currents of being made accessible by simply going along with what seems to be important at the time. As opposed to living within the already-understood. Being cool, not all doctrinal, which is to say living within experience, and not experience as divided and structured by words.
And yet, acting according to the spontaneous prompting of the mind and what seems good to the others--there are some obvious dangers to this. There are many things that can make us think things.
The local church is war-weary. Perhaps the same war-weariness is also in the Orthodox and Muslim places of prayer. At the Sanctus at the English Mass, the entire congregation stared silently, and it seemed, sullenly, at the violinist intoning the melody. Eventually a few voices murmured something corresponding to the text.
I'm not a fan of the English Masses in this part of the world generally. Functionally, it's useful as a sort of lingua franca Mass, but a traveller shouldn't expect a Mass in their own language; a (novus ordo/modern) Latin rite would do just as well for diplomats, travellers, and foreign workers. Perhaps the reason why the Masses were Latin in the first place. If you know the liturgy well enough, and have the readings, the only longeurs are in the homily, and studying the decorations of the church can easily substitute for listening to the meditations.
The point is the spiritual exercise, the focusing of the mind, the meditation, and the meaningful act. And it seems no one's doing any of these things anymore. In American suburbia, they're worshipping their lawns, in the cities, they're playing to the televisions, and abroad, most seem just to be looking to participate in a social event. Omnis homo mendax. But one honors the obligation. Harrumph, etc.
Oddly soul-less Beethoven's Ninth from Warsaw to close the season. Like a waterfall of flower petals rather than water itself. Beethoven without the political danger. Speed, when it finally came, without passion or fear. Perhaps deliberately created as a consumer good of comfort.
Still, though, the ability to just eavesdrop upon a major ensemble playing the Ninth as a matter of course is a good thing. There must be a better way to get all of the remarkable things going on in the world at any given moment to the attention of more people. So much of the present media mindset was created by bursts of transmission over the air at set times to those in reach of the transmission. The internet is fundamentally a different thing.
I tend not to write and think about foreign wars, as it's generally not my business, even though the hard-won doctrines of neutrality seem to have slipped away in the last few years. I doubt that there will be the equivalent of the Alabama settlement after the dust settles in Europe, for example. (Interestingly, the U.K, as a dominant naval power, always sidestepped the 19th c. neutrality conventions.) The events of the last few days or so in the Levant are troubling. Going after general command and control seems to signal an all-out war. I don't think a conflict can get more across-the-board than that. These are not proportional attacks in pursuit of declared objectives, nor are they claimed to be. Which is why I'm puzzled that the news seems to treat it as the sort of one-off strikes that happen from time to time. Hold on to your... whatever it is that you think that you should grab onto. #notexpert #justwiseacring
Back in the city of the Jedi Council. Interesting trip. En route, stopped off in the capital of the old Republic to make the pilgrimage that was blocked earlier, as the national church had been celebrating a pontifical liturgy when I arrived, and wanted only those of that nationality inside the building at the time. No matter. Some odd dreams in the interval. An interesting visit to a favorite city. But traveling by bus in summer does have its peculiar difficulties. Must find a magic carpet or something.
The rooms here are a bit pricier than the usual budget for these travels would allow. Some financial shenanigans forced me to book relatively last-minute, off the price curve. Had wanted to return to the theatre festival in Transylvania this month, but all of the places in the old Saxon capital were outside of the budget. As it turns out, with the last minute booking, what I'm paying now would have put me in range of a cheap set of rooms timely booked there, so that's a mite frustrating. But he moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Mainly arm-wrestling the invisible hand of the markets, it seems.
Hoping for a productive month. It is familiar territory. Hopefully the shadow of war in the Western Balkans will recede once all involved realize that everyone else in the world is panicking over trade routes and there's very little support for vindicating claims of ethnic right. A peculiar world. For my part, I just read philosophy and visit the theatres.
Racine's Berenice, apparently a new production at the Comedie Francaise, at the national theatre here as part of a festival/conference -- back row, top balcony, $10. Closed my eyes and listened to the Alexandrines for most of it; cast quite skillful. Interesting characters in the top balcony. At the end, I might have been the only one in the house standing to applaud, but I was right.
La Gioconda at the opera house. Upper balcony side, about as far from the plane of the plaster line as the conductor was. ($5.67 via half-price site.) Consciously summoning up memories of the visit and performance here as an undergraduate. After that visit, the theatre of this city stood for a certain thing in my mind for a very long time, and I tried, with modest success, to inhabit that idyll. I suppose you can't go unheimlich again. But a very powerful evening.
Oddly, as I stood up at the end, I realized that what had seemed to be a robust zipper on the jeans had somehow given out completely. Luckily, simply buttoning the coat solved the problem. Always wear a coat of decent length.
Interesting that it's on the feast of Barnabas ('Barnaba' is the Inquisition spy.) Possibly a noticed holiday in these parts--traditionally the midsummer day in old style dating.
Under no illusions as to the character of the environs. Though I've stumbled into a reasonably comfortable place for the several days I'm here, this is still the most commercial, class-conscious, and ruthless city on the itinerary. Sometimes you need to take the low path through the old city. Though I didn't have any choice in making the interstitial jaunt, I'm hoping to make the best of it. It does bring some shadows into the mind, but the dawn runs are easier here than in sleepy Transylvania, and much more than the other place before but one.
The immediate environs are the biosphere of the Euro-jaunters, which I find a bit frightening, tbh. But on the periphery, the familiar chain coffee stores where I can sit for a bit with a book. And the museums and theatres are very reasonably priced, if you're willing to take the most distant seats in the house. Which has been my course for lo these many years. A habitual resident of the heavens.
Interesting aside in one of the Frederick Forsyth obits in the Times. He was struck by the women of Budapest. There is a certain vibe amongst the folks of both genders here. Perhaps centuries ago, a people from the east found good farmland and an especially defensible and auspicious bend in the great river, and decided to settle down and milk the happiness of the earth. And the culture does still seem to have the fruitful-and-multiply stance about it. At least in the capital. The outer districts are likely entirely populated by unshaven Kraznahorkian madmen living in castles of dirty, discarded styrofoam construction paneling on the windswept heath, staring listlessly at the groundhogs.
Aside from travels in university days, one of my first encounters with the place was a bobbled bus transfer -- as the stops hadn't been announced, and I didn't know that there were two stations in town, and it was the middle of the night, I got off the bus and realized my mistake as the bus pulled away. Looking around, I saw a subway station (above ground) nearby and decided that there must be a map there. I walked over, and just as I arrived, what turned out to be the last train of the evening arrived, and I got on, although I hadn't yet got to the map on the platform. As it turned out, it was going precisely where I needed to go. I stacked my bags on the seat opposite, and as I did so, a young woman with long dark hair and a long flowing skirt, seemingly the genius of the place herself, waked past and smiled.
It takes the power of decision to decide to milk what joy you can from the earth, and though I've never seen eye to eye with the Epicureans, the stance that sets itself to live in such a manner does has some faint tincture of Eden to it.
One of the difficulties in (finally being able to start to make a return to) the Jedi dojo is that folks tend to think that it is a message to them. Another consequence of the triumph of pragmatism. But disciple isn't a demonstration of virtue; it wants nothing to do with the observer. It's not a message, at least not a message from me, and if it's a message from someone else, I have nothing to do with either the sender or the recipient. The original meaning of virtue is strength. The shining city on the hill was not built, and does not function, in order to send messages by semaphore or flashing lights. What this age misses is the reality of the thing itself.
Two productions I've seen recently, the Cyrano at JDP and the Hamlet at the Hungarian theatre in Cluj seem to underscore the danger of staging the Western canon according to the pop-culture view of the West. The 80's glam-rock vibe of the former, and the unfortunate cage-brawl duel at the end of the latter seem taken from television and film, rather than a consciousness of the source culture. I mean, you wouldn't stage a Noh piece with a manga vibe, or conduct a Beethoven based on the late 1990s MIDI versions on the web.
In fairness, many if most directors stateside would do the same thing. Tempore, mores, etc. But Hamlet or Cyrano being unable to speak to the folks who are perched a bit precariously between East and West (as, I suppose, technically, every spot on earth is) is a loss all around.
Also: colloquial English versions of the verse on the supertitles (text is the famously peculiar Hungarian adaptation from the 19th c., I think) are supremely disconcerting to those who know the plays. I find myself closing my eyes, so I can think through the actual structure of the text (which, in fairness is possibly not available to the actors in the adaptation).
That said, the Hamlet there is worthwhile. I saw it three times this year, taking careful notes each time. (tickets a bit pricier than the usual Balkans budget, but still under $15). Mulling a longer piece on it. Not for any audience, just to think through a few things.
I worked several times with a great Czech scenographer whose talk-back schtick was to ask people to raise their hands if they (a) liked the play, (b) disliked the play, or (c) had no opinion about the play. He would then scan the room after (c) (quite a large percentage, always), and hang his head and say, "Now that frightens me."
Perhaps the reason that I kept coming back was the discovery that the odd building I ran past before dawn every weekday in the winter a year ago had staged a Hamlet. And I became very curious about what that might be. It's a bit personal, and a full explanation of my interest (amply rewarded) will have to wait for that longer piece.
Living in a condition of life similar to that of Indiana Jones without becoming as reductionist and cliched as Indiana Jones is a bit of a challenge sometimes. Imagine Proust attempting to go around the world in eighty days. The task is Wellsian, so the story must be according to the terms of H.G.
Incidentally, those Spielberg films are parables of American spirituality. Ark and Grail, obviously, but also Eastern spirituality (Temple of Doom), esoteric faiths, and sci-fi parables in a spiritual context. Essentially, what happens when the older notions of religion play out against an American ontological context. And "Indiana" stands for the new world, the discovered place; his dislike for the name comes from the fact that the name was used in a derogatory sense against the people who lived there originally.
Perhaps.
#saturdayradio BBC adaptation of Priestley's Good Companions. Priestley is a real touchstone for me. Like Fowles, he managed to smuggle a few worthwhile things into mass-market printings. A novel is always about the experience of a single person within time, divided among the characters, and therefore analogous to the act of creating the novel. But this is only an analogy. The point of the work is to say that this is the experience of a single soul.
I try to avoid the news--entertainment of the present national politics, but in a more abstract sense, when you sense the falseness of things at the center, which is necessarily a function of ideas, perhaps there is some concern that things closer to you, which necessarily tend more to the empirical and mimetic, might similarly seem to be tending to the false, if they were to be subjected to the scrutiny of ideas.
On second thought, it's no error of the Beeb to keep close that which is their own. Probably a weakness on my part to have drawn from the public trough during the rest of the weekend. It was useful when I was in dicey circumstances (not in the constitutional sense), but there's no reason to tap into the matrix first thing on the day of rest when there's a sound cabin and library. Independency.
"An elite and highly trained US border patrol team had recently joined the search."
Arkansas.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/06/arkansas-devil-in-the-ozarks-caught
The Saxe-Coburg Marconi machine, sub nom. BBC Radio 3/4 seems to have restructured their web access with an eye to increasing revenue. Puts the kibosh on News Quiz and In Our Time with Saturday brunch. Basically, what the OED did a few years ago -- increased departmental revenue at the cost of global influence. Speaking commercials to the nations.
New Sabbath-day brunch possible standby:
Politics stateside turning into a bit of a soap opera, which is occasionally the sign of a more general condition of things. No particular knowledge, but it's struck me on more than one occasion that the point of modern wars and policy battles is to, like the canny dons at a college meeting, maneuver the debate so that their faction leads both sides of the question.
Admin tasks until 2AM, so again no AM run. Clearly vis-a-vis the testing of voices, the impulse that I had at the February nadir to the south to hie to the simplicity of the mountains of Bulgaria was a good one. Bright side, my stubbornness brought some interesting evenings at the theatre in Belgrade and here. The task is in the books -- though watching other people do theatre can help with that.
Interesting, the FCO has put out traveller advisories across the Balkans advising travellers of stiff penalties for unauthorized substances, and noting that airports have machines of extraordinary sensitivity. I never touch the stuff, but I had an interesting experience in London a few years ago. It's a little-known fact that you can take an outside path between the two terminals, instead of the monorail. I took the meadow path, as it was a beautiful day, and I didn't want to miss the chance to walk on English soil. As it turns out, it was also the de facto break area for the airport employees, who were smoking a peace pipe or two near the path. After just walking past them, I got a dismissive sneer from the elderly lady using the electronic wand to sweep the luggage in the second terminal. But I did get a buttercup out of it, so still a win over the monorail.
Zauberflote and Marriage of Figaro (double-bill, abridged) at the conservatory. Graduation performances. Quite good. Zauberflote especially. I imagine Austrian culture was once a complex question here, given the Hungarian magnates in the area.
I'm not a freemason, but Zauberflote is a mystery piece. Always meaningful. Longstanding habit of mine never to applaud in the second act.
Day quite warm. Double-timed the 45 (25) minute walk in the first of the summer heat, so arrived as if finishing a run. Kept to the back, where there was, alas, little air. Air in the house proper much better than the other evening though. Oxygen makes for better art.
In the world as it should have been, I would still be in NYC now, doing theatre and practicing law. But in the postlapsarian dispensation, there are many interesting gardens and worthwhile things to find. It's not that the city itself was essential, but it does raise you to a certain level, at which the work is more worthwhile. As I wander the strange gardens, the fight is to keep the eyes and mind alive.
Interesting story in the news about a month ago -- the son of a couple who were involved in confidential government work was apparently a bit alienated, and travelled to the Court of Peter, Elizabeth, and Catherine, enlisted in the army in hope of citizenship, and was promptly sent into a unit with a rather high mortality rate. Salutary reminder that those alienated from the factions of Athens are also, and separately, the enemies of those outside the city.
The fault in the present politics seems abundantly clear, but perhaps no one thinks that they would get any richer from making the point. Democracy in Athens was frequently the means of tyranny; the point was that the moderating aristocracy (Aeropagus, etc.) could be bypassed, if a single person could command the demos. The mechanism of present power is the media machine, which somehow has convinced people that they personally have an instinctive, unlearned insight and power vis a vis the national politics. Because they watch television. And so the central authority predominates, and when one person commands a predominant central authority, this is, by its terms. monarchy (you can have elective, or even legislative monarchies).
Second, the king always wants to go to war. Look at UK constitutional history -- constant assembling of parliaments to get money for foreign wars, ships money, etc. Traditionally, this is counterbalanced by forms of collective authority distinct from the nation as a whole -- the Estates, the churches, the federated states, etc. The point of the latter being that it's much better to live peaceably and happily than go off to war to gratify the ego of a king. So, in this natural balance, the wars ideally were taken up only where the people in the states/Estates/churches could be convinced that it was absolutely necessary for the country. In a monarchy in the context of a centralized state, these subordinated forms of group identity within the state matter less. Each citizen stares into the center by using the glowing machines on the wall or in their hand. Ergo, war is the order of the day.
No run this AM. The conservatory performance was worthwhile, but it was still a few hours of sitting quietly in a rather crowded and under-ventilated room. The full 8 h., a great rarity with me, seemed in order. The locals are a bit like the Chicagoans in that regard, perhaps because of the winters. The comfort of the close.
2,500 years ago, it would have been possible to observe the apprentices perform their choric odes in the open stone theatre of Lycurgus, head back to the dwelling, have some vegetables, and then wake at dawn to run. But we live in airtight cubes now, for no reason that I can fathom other than the forced-air climate control requires it. (Even where the structures themselves use radiant heat instead.)
Walked down to the university conservatory for a graduation performance of Carmen. Quite impressive. As a professional actor or performer, you will perform thousands of times. But the night of the graduation performance is meaningful, and therefore more interesting to observe. I remember my conservatory repertory and showcase very well. The moment when the ideas were most full.
"At the beginning of the story, it is only in the heaven of ideas that Carmencita is any different than the other girls around her." (Adorno)
When the Pope was elected, the Sun-Times ran a photo of him, newly ordained, meeting JPII in Chicago. I thought I caught a few glimpses of it early on, but looking at the tapes from the Vatican in the news feed, I'm very struck by the similarity in bearing and demeanor. Imitation is a very useful door, even when possibly unconscious. Transmission.
One troubling thing, though, was the location of the political conference based in my country, and the explicit endorsements and promises of support from serving members of the executive. When it comes to political speech, license can swiftly become licentiousness.
Odd story in the local press here for about half a news cycle, reporting the State Department disclosure of lobbyists for the far right candidate. A consultancy based around the legacy of a former Nixon pollster, apparently quite active in the region supporting the far right. Insight: a local politician, a friend of the candidate, gave an interview to say that once the election began, he seemed to have a demon, and was saying things he'd never said before. The fellow expressed the hope that his friend would be able to speak as himself after it was all over.
I'm apolitical, as anyone in this position should be, but that does make me a bit more aware about the overreaches of others in that area. The way of the world. If your cup is full, may it be again.
The recent strike deep inside enemy territory in the European imbroglio is a lttle troubling. For all of the savageness and inhumanity of the fight, it's never been a condition of general war -- perhaps until now. The analogy might be two gangs in a brutal knife fight, and one goes around back and destorys the other side's machine guns. Combined with the recent agreement out of Berlin, very troubling. One danger of bold initiatives for peace is that they can inflame the war, if they don't work, as the equilibrium of the fight has been shaken.
Amateur musings, #notexpert, just #wiseacring.
If the Last Rather Big War should have taught us anything, it's that, in a society based on reason, the people doing bad things will have well-justified reasons for doing these things. Which is why justification isn't enough. It does come down to an ineluctable conflict between the people doing bad things and the people living in a better way, but only the prople doing bad things think that it's therefore just a conflict between equally valid subjectivities -- they think this because they realize that both types find their own thinking to be justified. But the people living in a better way generally don't ground their conduct in the justification or approval of those around them. The better person prevails not because they're more justified, or stronger, but because the only possible ground for the good is mind-independent. We use our minds to reach the good. The malefactor does what he can get away with; the good person does what he can accomplish.